Autumn Mist | Weekly Photo #128
The colours have finally turned and autumn is in full flow so, like many other landscape photographers right now, I’ve been out and about in the various local woodlands trying to make photographers of this year’s colourful display. I also made a quick trip west to the Brecon Beacons in Wales for a touch of waterfall photography and although the falls were my primary focus, I managed to snag some autumnal woodland images while I was there. That trip was awesome by the way! I’ll be sharing some of those pictures here soon enough.
While I’m providing updates, I’ve also been taking more intimate photos of the natural landscape which I’m calling “small scenes”. These photos focus on nature’s abstract shapes, patterns and textures which, in a good way is forcing me to look at the landscape in a different way and project I am really enjoying so far. I’m not quite ready to share any of these just yet but as soon as I am, maybe early next year, you will of course be the first to see them.
Fujifilm XT2 | XF55-200mm | 55mm | 1/13th Second | f/8 | ISO200
One of the few problems I have with this craft of mine is my editing backlog. I’m normally a few weeks (or sometimes months) behind as with only so much time available to spend on photography-related activities, I tend to prioritise my time spent out with my camera over post-processing. So, in keeping with the time of year and not having processed any of this year’s autumnal photos just yet, here’s one I took during a misty morning back in November last year.
This day was one of those rare occasions when the fog penetrates the forest and just hangs around for a few hours leaving plenty of time to explore and hunt down compositions without it being a race against time before the fog lifts. Although it’s been a year since I took this photo, I remember it well as it’s the same day I took one of my favourite woodland photos of 2020 which I called The Performer.
Along with those delightful autumnal colours, what caught my eye was how the composition includes two framed subjects, one in the foreground and one towards the back. In the foreground, we have that small cluster of vibrant yellow birch trees framed by the delicately slender branches encroaching the frame on the right-hand side, the golden ferns towards the bottom and the Scots Pine to its left. That tall Scots pine with its wavey branches help frame the smaller but no less interesting tree in the bottom-left corner of the image. The subtle orange leaves on that tree in the background complement the similar-looking tones in the ferns and very subtly add balance to the composition as, without that tree, most of the colour in the scene would be on the right, creating too much visual weight on that side.
As I said at the beginning, I’ve shared this photo from last year as I haven’t quite got around to editing any of this year’s autumnal woodland photos but to give myself a bit of a kick up the proverbial, I promise, next week I will absolutely share a woodland image taken in autumn this year.
Until next week.
Trevor
This post is featured in my Weekly Photo series where I post a new photo every Monday. To have this delivered directly to your inbox, you can subscribe to the mailing list here.